* * *
Two hours before dawn, Miles and I meet in our dark living room and head to the car for the hourlong ride to the balloon staging area. I’m not inventing a need to be in my clinic; overnight texts have persuaded me that I can’t take time for a balloon ride this morning. I’ll get Miles situated and continue on to work.
Miles’s excitement crowds the car. “I’ve never ridden in a hot-air balloon,” he says. “Is it scary?”
“Not like skydiving.”
He turns to me suddenly. “I haven’t done something new in a long time,” he says. “Can you believe I’ve never been to France?”
“One step at a time.”
We park by a big stretch of gravel where around twenty semi-deflated “envelopes” droop against the ground, barely illuminated by small fluorescent lights. The Clubhouse is both spartan and lavish—the tricky balance required by the hardy rich. My distrust of the wealthy and the famous is prejudice, I’m well aware. But my patients have so little—they’d inherit the earth today if there were any justice. It’s a godsend that Sasha likes dealing with collectors. She dresses up and paints on eyeliner like when she worked in the music industry, and the Sasha I fell in love with back in college is resurrected. No one can resist her.
Miles is told he’s first in line for an empty spot, and he shakes my hand goodbye. “Thanks so much for the ride, Drew. I hope I haven’t cost you too much sleep.”
“Not at all,” I say. But as I’m leaving the Clubhouse for my car, I consider what will happen if Miles doesn’t get a spot. Everyone at home is still asleep; who will come get him?
So I wait with him, drinking excellent Colombian coffee while the hardy rich congregate in their costly cold-weather layers and fine haircuts. When they begin dispersing to their assigned balloons, Miles learns that everyone has shown up—there’s no room for him. He can try again at one p.m. Visibly crestfallen, he shakes my hand and urges me on with my day, insisting he’ll wait. I’m faced with a choice between driving him back to the house, directly out of my way, or leaving him to idle here for hours.
The balloons have begun to inflate, their bright patterns flattened by the dim fluorescence into shades of gray. I go to the desk. “I’m Drew Blake,” I tell the shining young person seated there. “Sasha Blake’s husband. I’m here with her cousin from Chicago. Any strings we can pull to get him a ride?”
Her face, initially shuttered, springs open in welcome, and she promises to try. I ask myself which feels worse: knowing people or not knowing anyone.
“Good news, Dr. Blake,” my new friend tells me a few minutes later. “We’re sending up one more. There’s room for both of you!”
“I can’t go,” I tell her shortly. “I have to get to my clinic.”
At her fleeting disappointment I repent my curtness. “Well, it’s balloon five,” she says. “He’ll have it all to himself.”
Miles’s happiness is so palpable that I feel it, too: a burst of physical relief at exchanging letdown for adventure. “Number five,” I tell him. “Have fun.”
He shakes my hand for the third time and hurries outside. A first intimation of blue pulses along the mountaintop. I follow Miles to make sure he finds his balloon. Most of the baskets hold several passengers, but number five is empty except for a pilot, who helps Miles climb in.
The pilot turns to me. “I’m not coming,” I tell him, and the man’s momentary surprise, coupled with the solitary slope of Miles’s shoulders （his back is turned）， impales my heart like a spear. Even as I remind myself, wildly, that I’ve more than fulfilled my obligation, I find myself aping the motions of a man overcome by irresistible temptation: I seize two of the cables and hoist myself up and over the top of the balloon basket, almost kicking the pilot in the head. “What the hell,” I bellow. “You only live once!”